FIFTY YEARS SINCE: 



AN ABBRESS, 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE ALUMNI OF THE UNIVERSITY OF j 
NORTH-CAROLINA, 



ON THE 7TH OP JUNE, 1859, 

■ (Bf-iti^ the day bet'nrn the Annua) Coininen<Sement.) 



BY 



WILLIAM HOOPER, 



;b of the society op alum> 



Forsan et hsec olitu raeminisee juYabit. 
Viko. 

Think oft, ye brethren — 

Think of the gladness of onr youthful prime : 
It oometh not again — that golden time. 

Motto to Stttbe; ; ekmant. 



13uMist)t& ftp <&xhix of tfj* Sotutj. 



EALEIGH: 
HOLDEN & WILSON, "STANDARD" OFFICE. 

1859. 





- 



* 



FIFTY YEARS SINCE: 



AN ADDRESS, 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE ALUMNI OF THE UNIVERSITY OF 
NORTH-CAROLINA, 



ON THE 7TH OF JUNE, 185 

(Being the day before the Annual Commencement.) 



BY 

WILLIAM HOOPER 

OHB OF THE SOCIETY OF JLUMNI. 



Forsan et hasc olim meminisse juvabit. 



Think oft, ye brethren — 

Think of the gladness of our youthful prime ; 
It cometh not again — that golden time. 

Motto to Student Life in Gerhamt. 



4 



V 



/ { 






EALEIGH: 

HOLDEN & WILSON, "STANDARD" OFFICE. 

1859. 






\&% 



&$- 



*1 



' 



PEEFACE. 



Those who heard the following Address delivered, will recollect, that 
owing to want of time, much of it was not read. They will, therefore, 
not be surprised to find here much that they did not hear. The 
author could not wish for his essay a happier fate than that it should 
receive from the reading public the same approbation that was accorded 
to it by a most good-natured audience, rendered so by the exhilarating 
| presence of the President of the United States. 

June, 1859. 



\ 






ADDRESS 

BEFORE THE ALUMNI OF THE UNIVERSITY 

OF 

NORTH-CAROLINA, 



Brothers of the Alumni— 

Literary Children of one Alma Mater i 

We come together at this annual festival j to salute and con- 
gratulate each other — to look back on the past and compare 
it with the present — to gratify an honest pride in contrasting 
the feeble and sickly infancy of our literary mother with her 
present vigorous maturity, and to breathe a common filial 
prayer that that vigorous maturity may long flourish, and not 
soon be succeeded by a languishing old age. 

Two years ago, I delivered, at another College, what I ex- 
pected would be my final offering at the shrine of the muses; 
but since the committee, representing the public opinion ^ have 
not consented to give me a discharge from this mode of pay- 
ing a debt of filial gratitude, I submit to their dictation, being 
glad to receive, in such appointment, their flattering attesta- 
tion that they yet detect no mark of senility disqualifying 
me for appearing before a commencement audience, and 
especially the audience of 1859, so highly honored by the 
presence of the chief magistrate of the republic. I am proud 
to rind, from two astronomical observations^ that Chapel Hill 
lies right in the orbit of Jupiter and his satellites, and that 
the period of his revolution is about twelve years. I beg the 
professor of astronomy here to make this entry in his Ephe* 
meris, and to look out for the recurrence of the same pheno- 
menon about 1871 ; if indeed, at that time, the head of this 
great republic be fitly symbolized by that glorious planet, 



and be not shivered, ere that cycle rolls around, by some 
disastrous concussion, into a score of nameless asteroids. May 
heaven avert the omen ! Had I said this at the city of 
Washington, and were I some quarter of a century younger, 
his Excellency might consider this exordium as the prelude 
to some application for office ; but on an academical jubilee 
like this, and from a speaker bordering on three-score and 
seven, he will receive it, I trust, only as the cordial and 
sincere expression of that rejoicing which we all feel at the 
honor of this visit. Yes, a truce from office-seeking here at 
least. We are glad to find that the President has survived 
that period of vexatious importunity — that crown of thorns 
which every President is obliged to wear on his first acces- 
sion, — and that he is likely, from present appearances, to serve 
his country for many years to come. 

I believe it is expected of the speaker to the Alumni that 
lie shall entertain them with reminiscences of persons and 
things long gone by — the longer the better. Hence the selec- 
tion, for this year, of your humble servant, there being very 
few now surviving who can number half a century from 
their graduation. And although I am neither a bachelor nor 
a widower, and therefore have no interest in making myself 
out younger than I am with my fair auditors, yet I will merely 
hint to this benevolent assembly that although it is just fifty 
years since I got my sheepskin, I was then in my prcetexta^ 
and had not yet put on the toga virilis. I shall, however, be 
happy if I get through the task of this day without extorting 
from some of my hearers the exclamation of the Roman 
satirist: "The old steed is broken down ; take him from the 
turf before he disgraces himself." * 

Particularly might my friends be anxious about me now as 
having to perform my part of the duties of this occasion after 
the display of this morning. I assure them that I feel a great 
degree of tranquility in that very consideration which they 
might deem a just cause of agitation and disquietude, to-wit : 

* Solve senescenten> mature sanus equum ue 
Feccet ad extremum, ridendus. — Hok. 



That 1 am succeeding the orator of the day. " 1 am no orator 
as Brutus is." Upon him I roll the responsibility of supply- 
ing all the eloquence due to the day. His shoulders are well 
able to bear the burden ; while to me remains only the easier 
part of the master of ceremonies, to announce to the audience : 
"Ladies and gentlemen ! the concert is over." * 

When I look back through the vista of those fifty years and 
bring before my " mind's eye " the long train of alumni who 
have risen to eminence and adorn their country, both at 
home and abroad, I may be indulged in something of a spirit 
of glorying, if as a professor of the University, I have had 
any share in the formation of these ornaments of the republic. 
I confess, when I look over the catalogue of graduates, and 
see so many laureled heads into which it was my lot to pack 
a portion of useful knowledge, I am elated with a little of 
that pride which swelled the breast of the mother of the gods 
on Mount Olympus, as she looked at her children around 
her : 

See all her progeny, illustrious sight ! 
Behold and count them, as they rise to light : 
She sees around her in the blest abode, 
A hundred sons, and every son a god ! 

I have said that it is perhaps expected of the alumni ad- 
dress, that it shall entertain you with reminiscences ; and I 
hope I shall not be too severely judged, if in preparing this 
entertainment, I looked forward to a hot day, a crowded 
house, and a great deal of grave business, — all which antici- 
pations warranted me in the selection of reminiscences of an 
amusing, as well as of an instructive kind. Indeed, a retros- 
pect of Chapel Hill antiquities, so far back as half-a-century. 
must needs bring up many a scene of so comic a nature. 

That to be grave, exceeds all power of face. 
In telling or in hearing of the case. 
i 
f This paragraph was added after hearing the splendid speech of Mr. McRae 
forenoon. 



8 

The first of the Waverly novels was entitled " Sixty Years 
Since," which serves as a date to the origin of those wonderful 
compositions. My tale shall be entitled " Fifty Years Since," 
though some of my story will embrace incidents within forty 
years of the present date ; and if it fall (as of course it will) 
infinitely below that of the renowned Sir Walter, in all other 
respects, it will rise above him in one ; that whereas most of 
his is fiction, mine is sober fact. At least, I intend it to be- 
so. But it may be with me as it was with Boswell, in his 
celebrated " Life of Dr. Johnson." He tells us that it was 
his habit, after being in company with his hero, to go imme- 
diately to his lodgings and record the sayings and doings of 
the Dr., at once, while they were fresh in his memory ; but 
that sometimes, when circumstances interfered, the facts lay 
on his memory for a day or two, and that he thought they 
were the tetter of it—as they had a chance to groio mellow ! 

I hope that if any of my co-evals are present^ who can 
look back as far into our antiquities as myself, they will not 
have occasion to say, when they hear some of my recitals : 
; ' There is a fact that has grown mellow in his memory," or 
to compare me with the aged harper in Scott's Lay of the 
Last Minstrel : 



" Each blank in faithless memory void, 
The poet's glowing thought supplied." 



It is my part then, to-day, to go back to the very increnah- 
ula of our college^— the cradle of its infancy 3 and to call up 
recollections of some who rocked that cradle. And 1 dare 
say while I am telling the story of the poor and beggarly 
minority of our alma mater, some of her proud, saucy sons of 
the present generation will smile scornfully at the humility 
of our origin. When I tell them that the classes of President 
Polk,— of Governors Branch, Brown, Manly, Morehead. 
Mosely, Spaight — of Judges Murphy, Cameron, Martin . 
Donnell, Williams, Mason, Anderson ;• of Senators Mangum 
and Haywood — of Drs. Hawks, Morrison, Green, &nd of 
many other graduates forty years back, eminent for meri* 



9 

though not holding office — when I tell the proud collegians 
of the present day, that these men came out ot classes con- 
sisting of nine, ten, fourteen, fifteen, the largest twenty-one, — 
they will set up a broad laugh, and think how poor a figure 
a class of ten or fifteen must cut on a commencement day ; 
and one will say : " Why I graduated with seventy-jive" and 
another: "I with one hundred," and another: "I with a 
hundred and ten." Well, I know of no better way to shelter 
myself from the storm of your ridicule, than by telling y^u 
a story. " Once upon a time," says JSsop, " a fox brought 
out her whole brood of little foxes, and paraded them before 
the lioness, and said J ' Look here ! see what a family I have, 
whereas you have but one !' ' I know said the queen of 
beasts that I bear but one at a time, but then he is a lion !' " 
I would also remind you, young classics, of the story of 
Hiobe, who boasted of her twelve children, and crowed over 
Latona, who had only two ; but then Latona's children were 
the sun and moon ! Forgive, young gentlemen, these boast- 
ings of an old man. You know it is the characteristic of 
such a one, to overrate the past, and underrate the present. 
But I trust I am sufficiently sensible of the vast advances 
made in all things at Chapel Hill since my day, to do full 
justice to the present age. You have turned the wild into a 
garden. You have substituted for the meagre bill of fare 
with which our minds were obliged to content themselves, a 
table rich in all the stores of learning which a half-century 
of unexampled progress has heaped upon it. I hope there- 
fore, when I roll back the volume of our college history, and 
show you " the day of small things," you will not despise too 
much our petty number, our humble accommodations, our 
rude manners, our hard fare, our scanty rations, and our lim* 
ited curriculum of studies. Let not 

Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile, 
The short and simple annals of the poor. 

When I first knew Chapel Hill in January, 1804, the in* 
fant university was but about six years old. Its only finished 



10 



buildings were what are now called the East Wing and the 
Old Chapel. The former was then only two stories high, 
capable of accomodating one tutor and sixty students by 
crowding four into a room. The faculty consisted of three : 
President Caldwell, Prof. Bingham, and tutor Henderson. 
Their college titles were " Old Joe," " Old Slick " and " Little 
Dick." " Old Joe," however, was only thirty years of age, 
and possessed (as you shall hear in the sequel) a formidable 
share of youthful activity. " Old Slick" derived his cogno- 
men, not from age, but from premature baldness, and the ex- 
treme glossiness of his naked scalp. And "Little Dick," a 
cousin of the late distinguished Judge Henderson, though he 
had a brave spirit, was not very well fitted by the size of his 
person, to overawe the threescore rude chaps over whom he 
was placed as solitary sentinel. As a nursery of the college 
there was then a preparatory school, taught by Matthew 
Troy and Chesley Daniel. All things were fashioned after 
the model of Princeton college, and that probably was fash- 
ioned after the model of the Scottish universities, by old Dr. 
Witherspoon. If this were the case, it would seem to ac- 
count for the small quantum of instruction provided for us, 
if Dr. Johnson spoke the truth when he said of Scottish edu- 
cation, that " there, every body got a mouthful, but nobody 
got a belly-full." Into this preparatory school, it was my 
fortune to be inducted, a trembling urchin of twelve years, 
in the winter of 1804. It was then a barbarous custom 
brought from the North, to rise at that severe season of the 
year, before day-light and to go to prayers by candle-light; 
and many a cold wintry morning do I recollect, trudging 
along in the dark at the heels of Mr., afterwards Dr. Caldwell, 
with whom I boarded, on our way to the tutor's room, to wait 
for the second bell. In that year I read Sallust's War of 
Jugurtha and Conspiracy of Catiline, under the tuition of 
Mr. Troy, of whom my recollections are affectionate, for he 
was partial to me, and taught me well for those times. But 
I can recollect some of my classmates, grown young men, 
upon whose backs he tried a blister-plaster, made of chinque- 
pin bark, to quicken the torpor ot the brain. Nor was he 



11 

singular in his discipline. Whether boys were then duller or 
more idle than now, I know not, but at that time whipping 
was the order of the day. I had, before coming to Chapel 
Hill, served three years under it, at Hillsboro', where Mr. 
Flinn wielded his terrible sceptre, and realized in our eye. 
the description of Goldsmith : 

" A man severe he was and stern to view ; 
I knew him well, and every truant knew ; 
Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace 
The day's disasters in his morning face." 

This was literally verified with us, when Dr. Flinn came to 
school on Monday morning, with his head tied with a crim- 
son bandana handkerchief. It was the bloody flag to us, and 
the very skin of our backs began to tremble. 

After serving such an apprenticeship at Hillsboro 7 , the ex- 
change for Mr. Troy's administration was like exchanging 
the cowhide for the willow twig, for Mr. Flinn's " little 
finger was thicker than Mr. Troy's loins." But now after 
drawing aside the pall of oblivion from these infirmities of 
the dead, I feel some twinges of remorse, as though I had 
rudely trodden on the ashes of my departed instructors ; tor. 
having been myself a teacher, all my life, I ought to knorw 
how to make allowance for the trials of teachers ; and if any 
one of you, my hearers, is accustomed to rail at the tyranny 
of pedagogues, and to flatter yourself with the conceit, that 
if you were one, you would always be able to control your 
temper, I would only address you in the language which the 
advertisement uses respecting sovereign recipes: "Try it," 
and if in six months you don't go and hang yourself", you 
will, at least, have more charity for teachers, all the days of 
your life. I told you that 1 remembered Mr. Troy with grat- 
itude ; but I believe nothing he ever taught me, imprinted 
itself so deeply on my memory, as the burst of eloquence 
which the boys told me he had made, when he was a student, 
upon the charms of Miss Hay, afterwards the first Mrs. Gas- 
con. Troy was given to the grandiloquent style, and on this 



12 

occasion Miss Hay, who was the belle of the day, with a 
small party came to visit the Dialectic library. It was then 
kept in one of the common rooms inhabited by four students ; 
and yon may judge of the tumult that was excited by every 
such visitation^ and how mnch sweeping and fixing np was 
required, and how many frightened boys ran to the neigh- 
boring rooms, and shut the doors^ all but a small crack to 
peep through. On this memorable occasion, Troy had fixed 
himself in a corner of the room, whence he could contem- 
plate the beautiful apparition in silent ecstacy. After she 
was gone, the librarian called him out of his trance, and said ; 
" Weil, Troy, what do you think of her ?" " Oh ! sir, she's 
enough to melt the frigidity of a stoic, and excite rapture 
in the breast of a hermit ;" to which he might have added ; 

" And like another Helen, has fired another Troy." 

A man that could talk in that way, appeared to me, in 
those days, to have reached the top of Parnassus, 

Having mentioned the library of one of the literary soci- 
eties, I must carry you back, ye proud Dialectics and Philan- 
thropies of the present age, to your humble birth, and reveal 
to you your inglorious antecedents. It may be good for you 
who now loll upon sofas and survey with triumph your thou- 
sands of volumes to look back fifty-five years, and glance 
your eye " into the hole of the pit whence ye were digged." 
The Dialectic library of this college, all of it, was then con- 
tained in one of the cupboards of one of the common rooms 
in the east building, and consisted of a few half-worn volumes, 
presented by compassionate individuals, and I think it was in 
the habit of migrating from room to room, as the librarian 
was changed, for you may be sure the responsibility of taking 
care of such a number of books could not be borne long by 
one pair of shoulders. And besides, there was some ambition 
to choose, as librarian, a man who could wait on the ladies 
with something of that courtly grace which distinguishes the 
marshals of this polished age. But the cavaliers of that 
early time, poor fellows ! had to make their way to the ladies 7 



hearts without any of the modern artillery of splendid sashes, 
moustaches and goatees. The naked face s with native flash 
or native pallor, was all their depen dance. The cupboards 
were not only small but full of rat-holes, and a large rat 
might have taken his seat upon Rollins 5 History, the corner 
stone of the library, and exclaimed with Robinson Crusoe : 

*' I am monarch of all I survey, 
My title taere 1 s none to dispute," 

Such was the infancy of Dialectic knowledge ; such the 
meagre fare provided for Dialectic literary appetite in those 
primeval days. 

And what is told of one library may be told of the other,, 
for they were as much alike as the teeth of the upper and the 
aower jaw, and as often came into collision. "When one 
library got a book, the other must have the same book, only 
more handsomely bound, if possible. I am sorry to record 
that the contest between the two societies, at that time, was 
not confined to an honorable competition which should have 
the finest library, or the best scholars ; but that it often 
amounted to personal rancor and sometimes seemed to threat- 
en a general battle. 

The societies then had no halls of their own, but held their 
sessions on different nights in the week in the old chapel, 
without any fire in the winter, and besides, with the north- 
wind pouring in through many a broken pane. Think of 
this, ye pampered collegians, of this effeminate age, and bless 
your stars that your college times have come fifty years later. 

Before I come down to a somewhat later period, let me 
present you with a sketch of the scenes going on under these 
old oaks in the year 1804, fifty-five years ago, and let me 
draw from memory, if I can, a picture of the 4th of July of 
that year, tor that was the commencement day — the great 
national festival being then the great college festival. 

The waves of the revolutionary war seemed hardly to have 
subsided, and hence military feeling and military habits in- 
truded upon academic shades and mixed themselves with the 



14: 



peaceful pursuits of literature. The great object of display 
on commencement day was not the graduates or their 
speeches, but a fourth of July oration, delivered by the 
General, who had been chosen by the vote of the whole body 
of students, preps and all, for free suffrage then prevailed, 
and a preps vote was as good as an} 7 body's. The office of 
General and orator of the day was, of course, an object of 
great ambition ; and while the election was pending, we 
preps felt our importance considerably augmented. Like the 
Nile, we always began to swell about the end of June ; but 
our inundation was sooner over, not lasting longer than the 
fourth of July. On these occasions the candidates would 
come down among us and take us in their arms and caress 
us most lovingly, and invite us to their rooms in college, and, 
I suppose, treat us there to gingercakes and cider, though as 
to that fact, I have no distinct recollection ; but all of you who 
are versed in the ways of candidates, will admit it to be very 
probable that they did. As well as I recollect, there was 
elected, beside the General or orator, the General's aid. On 
this occasion Thomas Brown, son of the late Gen. Brown, of 
Bladen, and brother-in-law of the late Gov. Owen, was 
elected General, and Hyder Ally Davie, son of Gen. Davie, 
was second in command. 

All things being duly arranged, the General, clad in full 
regimentals, with cocked hat and dancing red plume, placed 
himself at the head of his troops (for we were all turned into 
soldiers, for the nonce) and marched up to the foot of the 
" Big Poplar," where was placed for him a rostrum, upon 
which he mounted, and, all the military disposing themselves 
before him, he gracefully took off his plumed helmet, and 
made profound obeisance to the army ; and if a prep's bosom 
ever throbbed with proud emotions and ever thrilled with 
anticipations of the pleasure of being a great man, our hearts 
felt that throb and that thrill on that day. I can tell you 
nothing of the graduating class, or their speeches. My child- 
ish fancy was taken up with the military display, though we 
had no music to march to but the drum and h'fe. If we had 



15 

had such a band as you have here to-day, it might have been, 
too much for us — few perhaps would have survived it. 

The ball at night was productive of an incident of some 
seriousness and importance. The old Steward's Hall, which 
some of yon have reason still to recollect to your sorrow, was 
then the ball-room. The floor was covered with spectators, 
except the spots left vacant for the dancers. Of course the 
dancers had to pull their partners to their position through a 
dense thicket of gentlemen, five deep. This may well be 
called " threading one's way," I should think. In such cir- 
cumstances dancing in the month of July, must have been 
delectable work, and must have always involved the risk of 
such unhappy rencounters as the one I am about to describe. 
Hyder Davie, aid- de-camp to Gen. Brown, in cutting the 
pigeon-wing before his partner, came down, rough-shod, upon 
the toes of Henry Chambers, of Salisbury. It was borne 
with, the first time, as an accident and overlooked ; but upon 
coining round the second time, it was repeated, and conse- 
quently was obliged to be considered as an intended insult. 
The wounded toe, which is sometimes the seat of honor, called 
the offending heel out of doors, and demanded an explana- 
tion. It resulted in an engagement, in which Chambers 
gave a blow or two, for which he received a stab or two, in 
the neck, from the pen-knife of Davie ; for in those simple 
days bowie-knives were not invented, nor arms worn, except 
openly by soldiers. The next day a solemn trial of the case 
was held in the chapel, by the trustees, among whom were 
Gen. Davie, Col. Polk, (ehairman,) Gov. Martin, Messrs. 
Oameron, Gaston, Nash and others, since the men of mark in 
our State. What decision the trustees came to, is not recol- 
lected, but I believe the combatants came off even. The 
ladies, the next day, were found to have taken sides, some 
for the heel and some for the toe, like the Little-Endians and 
Big-Endians, familiar to the readers of Gulliver. 

I will detain you on this part of my subject only a moment. 
to call your attention to two things characteristic of the age. 
The first is, the spirit of the times indicated by the name 
Hyder Ally, given to his son, by Gen. Davie, and that of 



16 



Tippoo Saib, given to his son by Maj. Pleasant Henderson. 
That two such men should have given their sons such out- 
landish names, in honor of two Hindoo despots and semi- 
barbarians, because they were at war with Great Britain, 
affords a lively idea of the old flame against the mother 
country, still burning in the breasts of the surviving officers 
of the revolution. 

The second reflection suggested by the incident before us, 
is the diminutive size of the ladies of those days. How un- 
ambitious, how feeble-minded they must have been to be 
contented with occupying no more space in the world, and 
in the eyes of men, to be pulled, that way, through a zig-zag 
maze of rough arms and shoulders, at the imminent risk of 
hanging by the hair or losing a comb or necklace in the 
transit. The ladies of the present day, have learned too well 
their just rights, to be satisfied with anything less than two- 
thirds of this wide, wide world. There is no limit to their 
inventive genius when it is stimulated by an encroachment 
on their rightful domains. They have added to the dimen- 
sions of their fame, as well as of their persons, by giving 
birth to a new order of architecture. A modern fine lady 
is, herself, a novel and wondrous specimen of architecture. 
Look at those two delicate little ankles I From the time of 
the erection of the Parthenon — from the time of the erection 
of the domes of St. Peter's and St. Paul's, down to the erec- 
tion of the domes at Washington or Ealeigh, was it ever 
supposed — would it ever have been believed — did it ever 
enter into the feeads of Phidias, Michael Angelo, or Sir 
Christopher Wren, that two such slender columns would have 
supported so stupendous a dome — especially columns con- 
structed on the most unartistic of all principles, the inverted 
cone ? It can be classed with no order of architecture now 
extant. We shall have to invent a new name for it, and I 
can think of none more appropriate than the Umbrella Order 
of Architecture. They who have dared to prop up such a 
magnificent fabric upon such a pedestal, have found out the 
pou sto of Archimedes, and can move the imiverse. 

It was at this commencement, I think (1804) that Greek 



was made a part of the college course. Gov. Martin, if I 
recollect, was the proposer of the measure. u You study 
logic," said he, " and you don't know the word from which 
the term is derived." No doubt the Governor gave some 
better arguments (if I had been old enough to cherish them) 
for substituting the classics of Greece for those of France, 
which last had then a factitious importance and popularity 
from the recent splendor of Voltaire, from our late obliga- 
tions to the country of La Fayette, and from the overwhelm- 
ing interest excited by the first French revolution. A little 
French had, before this time, been accepted in the place of 
Greek, and a Frenchman had been a necessary " part and 
parcel " of the faculty. Of course, to torment him, and 
amuse themselves with his transports of rage, and his broken 
English, was a regular part of the college fun. The trustee? 
after some experience found that it was better to have French 
taught by a competent American, though with a little less of 
the Parisian accent, than to have to fight daily battles \c< 
redress the grievances of a persecuted monsieur. Greek, 
after its introduction, became the bug-bear of college. 
Having been absent when my class began it, I heard, on my 
return, such a terrific account of it, that I no more durst en- 
counter the Greeks than Xerxes when he fled in consternation 
across the Hellespont, after the battle of Salamis. Rather 
than lose mj degree, however, after two years, I plucked up 
courage, and set doggedly and desperately to work, prepared 
hastily thirty Dialogues of Lncian, and on that stock of Greek 
was permitted to graduate. As for Chemistry and Differen- 
tial and Integral Calculus and all that, w T e never heard of 
such hard things. They had not then crossed the Roanoke, 
nor did they appear among us, till they were brought in by 
the northern barbarians, about the year L818. Yet notwith- 
standing the poor showing we could make as to faculty and 
course of study, the secretary of the board of that day, was 
very ambitious of opening a sisterly correspondence and 
communion with all the colleges of the United States. He 
sent for all their Latin Catalogues, and in order to be even 
with them, made up, out of his own stock of Latin, a Cata- 



18 

logue for us, and diffused it through the land, from Maine to 
Georgia. Now this was Very unwise policy in that officer^ 
for we were then in the very egg-shell of our existence, and 
ought to have concealed our nakedness from our mocking 
brethren of the North. This Latin pamphlet was, in every 
respect, a sorry looking affair. It was gotten up at Raleigh, 
on coarse paper, and it can be no offence now to say, that 
Raleigh was not at that era a fortunate place of issue for a 
Latin pamphlet. But what was worse, it was disfigured with 
several sad blunders in the Latin (for I don't know that Latin 
is any part of the qualifications of a secretary of the board) 
and exhibited to the admiring world the following imposing 
Senatus Academicus : President Caldwell, who taught 
mathematics, natural and moral philosophy, and did all the 
preaching. Your humble servant was professor of lan- 
guages, in general, I suppose; all, ancient and modern ; and 
William D. Moseley (the future governor of Florida) was 
tutor. The professor of languages was of course responsible 
for this elegant and classical production, in which, among 
other beauties, I recollect the treasurers of the board were 
called in conspicuous capitals treasurarii ! I writhed under 
the mortification a long time, and was always afraid of meet- 
ing a professor from the North, lest he should ask me what 
was the Latin for treasurer. 

The South building, our neighbor over there, was then in 
an unfinished state, carried up a story and a half, and there 
left for many years to battle with the weather unsheltered ; 
but still it was inhabited. " Inhabited !" you will say, " by 
what ? By toads and snails and bats, I suppose." No sir, by 
students. Risum teneatis amicif 

As the only dormitory that had a roof was too crowded for 
study, and as those who tried to study there spent half the 
evening in passing laws to regulate the other half, many 
students left their rooms as a place of study entirely, and 
built cabins in the corners of the unfinished brick walls, and 
quite comfortable cabins they were; but whence the plank 
came, out of which those cabins were built, your deponent 
' not. Suffice it to hint that in such matters college boys 



19 

are apt to adopt the code of Lycurgus : that there is no harm, 
in privately transfering property, provided you are not caught 
at it. In such a cabin your speaker and dozens like him 
hibernated and burned their midnight oil. As soon as spring 
brought back the swallows and the leaves, we emerged from 
our dens and chose some shady retirement where we made a 
path and a promenade, and in that embowered promenade 
all diligent students of those days had to follow the steps of 
science, to wrestle with its difficulties, and to treasure up their 
best acquirements : 

Ye remnants of the Peripatetic school ! 
Ah ! ye can tell how hard it is to climb 
The steep where fame's proud temple shines afar! 

They lived sub dio, like the birds that caroled over their 
heads. "But how/' you will say, " did they manage in rainy 
weather ?" Aye, that's the rub. Well, nothing was more 
common than, on a rainy day, to send in a petition to be ex- 
cused from recitation, which petition ran in this stereotype 
phrase : "The inclemency of the weather rendering it impos- 
sible to prepare the recitation, the Sophomore class respectfully 
request Mr. Rhea to excuse them from recitation this after- 
noon." To deliver this mission to the Professor I was appoint- 
ed envoy ordinary (not extraordinary) and plenipotentiary, 
being a little fellow hardly fifteen, and perhaps somewhat of 
a pet with the teacher. The Professor, a good-natured, indo- 
lent man, after affecting some vexation, (though he was 
secretly glad to get off himself,) and pushing the end of his 
long nose this way and that way some half a dozen times 
with his knuckles, concluded in a gruff voice with : i; Well, 
get as much more for to-morrow." The shout of applause 
with which I was greeted upon reporting the success of my 
embassy resembled, (if we may compare small things with 
great,) the acclamations with which Mr. Webster was hailed 
by the nation upon happily concluding the Ashburton treaty 
in 1842, by which war with Great Britain was prevented. 
Mr. Webster may have been greater, but he was not prouder 



20 

than I was at the successful issue of my negotiations. Who 
knows but I might now have been a first rate diplomate, if 1 
had followed up these auspicious beginnings ! And what do* 
jou think was the lesson from which a deliverance for one 
day was the occasion of such tumultuous joy ? Why it was- 
Morse' 8 geography, which was then the main Sophomore study, 
contained in two massy octavos, and to recite off which, like 
a speech, page by page, was the test and the glory of the first 
scholar of the class. 

Dr. Morse was, with us, the great man of the age, and stood* 
as high as does now his son, the inventor of the telegraph ;. 
and that notwithstanding he had stigmatised our State by 
mentioning under the head of "manns and customers of 
North-Carolina," that a fashionable amusement of our people 
in their personal rencounters was, for the combatant who got 
his antagonist down to insert his thumb into the corner of his 
eye and twist out the ball ; which elegant operation they 
called gouging. This slur upon our national character would, 
now-a-days, have banished his book from the State. It ex- 
cited so much the wrath of one of our representatives in 
Congress, Wm. Barry Grove, of Fayetteville, that he declared 
if he ever met with Dr. Morse he would gouge him. He 
did meet with the Doctor, who had heard of the threat, but 
instead of executing his purpose they had a hearty laugh over 
the story, Dr. Morse alleging that he had derived the account 
from Williamson. 

Our geographical recitations were enlivened by some rare 
scenes, one or two of which I will venture to relate, though 
they are almost too farcical for this dignified assembly, and 
yet they are among the things, " as my Lord Yerulam remarks, 
which men do not willingly let die." The class was reciting 

on Greenland. The youth under examination was r 

I do not feel safe to mention his name, for he may be here 
among us for aught I know, (the speaker looking anxiously 
over the crowd,) but if he is, he will be easily known by the 
length of his ears, and there are no animals on earth that 
bite and kick harder than the long-eared tribe. We will, 
therefore, indicate him by the name Sawney. Mr. Sawney, 



m 

says the Professor, can you tell me anything about the 
■animals of Greenland ? " Yes, sir, there's one called the seal." 
What kind of an animal is it \ "I don't remember exactly, 
sir, but I believe he says it is a very amphib — a very arrtr 
phlblobus kind of animal, sir." The boys plagued him about 
this new kind of animal until he became as irritable as a nest 
of wasps by the way-side. Another student, whom we will 
disguise under the name of Higgle, used to amuse various 
companies by telling the story upon Sawney. Now Higgle 
was the last man that ought to have made people merry over 
the blunders of others, for he had got his own nickname by 
his ludicrous pronunciation of Riga^ Russian town on the 
Baltic. He was asked what were the chief towns in Russia? 
BLe mentioned several, and among them Higgle on the Baltic, 
pronouncing the first syllable of the last word as it is heard 
in balance. The name Riggie stuck to him forever afterwards. 
But it often happens that he who smarts most under a joke is 
most ready to avert pursuit by throwing ridicule upon 
others — as in the street, the thief, hearing the hue and cry 
after him, escapes by echoing the cry "stop thief!" and 
joining in the chase. Sawney, goaded by Riggie's persecu- 
tion, determined to avenge himself; so he laid a trap for him. 
He got a friend to invite a company including Riggie into 
his room, and to call for the story, while in the meantime, 
Sawney concealed himself under the bed. Riggie, alas! un- 
conscious of the Trojan horse within the walls, was going on 
with his story, full sail, the audience convulsed with the en- 
joyment of the present and the anticipation of the paulo-post- 
future ; when in the very fifth act of the drama, out popped 
Sawney from his ambush, and pitched into the dismayed 
comedian. I shall not not attempt to describe the battle ; 
but it may well be supposed that Sawney, stung with wounded 
pride and bursting with long imprisoned rage, fought with 
more desparation, and that his adversary, startled by a foe 
emerging suddenly from ambush, must have fought to a dis- 
advantage. That was the last time I imagine that Riggie, or 
any body else, told the story of amphibiobus, nor would it 
have been revived to-day had I not trusted that a lapse of 



22 



more than fifty years had either removed our hero from the 
reach of all earthly ridicule, or mollified his resentment into 
merriment ; or at least, that being unnamed in my annals, he 
would take care not to write his name under the picture by 
attacking me. But if he or any other witness of the facts 
were here to challenge my truth and to show what a good 
story I had made out of nothing, I suppose you all would 
thank him about as much as you would thank a man, who, 
after you had dined pleasantly, as you supposed, upon a good 
fat hare, should come forward, show you the paws and con- 
vince you that what you had enjoyed so sweetly, was nothing 
but a cat. 

Such adventures as the foregoing were more apt to happen 
with sophmores than with other classes. To save them from 
the clutches of Dr. Morse, on a rainy day, was one of the 
chief honors of my sophomore year. Sophomores have 
always been hard fellows to deal with. This results from 
their amphibious nature, and colleges have given them a 
name (sophos mows) expressive of their compound character, 
partly wise and partly foolish. They are in a transition state, 
half-man and half-boy ; their voice alternating in a most 
ludicrous manner between the alto and the doss, so that, in 
the dark, you would suppose it was two persons talking. 
Their compositions too have the same mixed character ; like 
comets they have a small nucleus with a prodigious expanse 
of tail.* Let not my young friends present, who happen to 
be sophomores, take umbrage at these pleasantries. I am not 
describing the sophomores of the present day, nor any specific 
sophomores. I am describing sophomores in the abstract, not 
in the concrete, and of course, no individual has a right to 
appropriate the description to himself, since the sophomore 
concrete has always specific peculiarities which shield him 
from being identified with the sophomore abstract. Besides, 
the glory of a sophomore is not in what he is, but in what he 
is to be. He is an eaglet. Now an eaglet, just beginning to 

* In Webster's Dictionary, Mr. Calhoun's authority is given for the word sophomor- 
ical in this sense. 



23 

be fledged, may not be a very comely bird, and its attempts 
to fly may be rather awkward ; but then in a month or two, 
he is to be the bird of Jove, soaring into the eye of the sun. 
and bearer of the thuderbolt. 

JUNIOR LIFE. 

Let me now give you a sketch of junior life, some fifty 
years ago in these precints. There being but three teachers 
in college, (president, professor of languages and tutor.) the 
seniors and juniors had but one recitation per day. The 
juniors had their first taste of geometry, in a little elementary 
treatise, drawn up by Dr. Caldwell, in manuscript, and not 
then printed. Copies were to be had only by transcribing, 
and in process of time, they, of course, were swarming with 
errors. But this was a decided advantage to the junior, who 
stuck to his text, without minding his diagram. For, if he 
happened to say the angle at A was equal to the angle at B. 
when, in fact the diagram showed n<> angle at B at all, but 
one at 0, if Dr. Caldwell corrected him, he had it always in 
his power to say : "Well, that was what I thought myself. 
but it ain't so in the book, and I thought you knew better 
than I." We may well suppose that the Dr. was completely 
silenced by this unexpected application of the argummtwm> 
ad hominem. You see how good a training our youthful 
junior was under, by a faithful adherence to his text, to be- 
come a "strict constructionist" of the constitution, when he 
should ripen into a politician. The junior, having safely got 
through with his mathematical recitation at 11 o'clock, was 
free till the next day at the same hour. And the first thing 
he had to determine was, what would be the most agreeable 
method of spending the rest of the day. Shall he ramble 
into the country after fruit, or shall he go a fishing, or shall 
he make up a party and engage a supper in the suburbs, at 
" Fur Craigs ?" The last measure was often adopted, because 
of our hard fare at Commons. Accordingly a party of some 
half-dozen would go out and engage a supper of fried chicken, 
or chicken pie, biscuit and coffee. It was waited for with 
extreme impatience, and many yawningsand other symptom- 



24 



of an aching void. At length it came upon the table, like 
the classical coma of the Romans, about three or four p. m. 
The guests sat down, at twenty-five cents per head ; and if 
you consider the leanness of our dinners at the Steward's 
Hall, you will be apt to suspect that the entertainer did not 
make much by that bargain. I'll tell you what, gentlemen, 
it will do w T ell enough for you, who live in these palmy times, 
and fare sumptuously every day, to call the University your 
alma mater, your oenigna parens, and all that, now that she 
is grown to be a fat, buxom lady, with a snug, dear income 
of fifteen thousand a year. But when I first knew her, she 
was a very poor woman, and her children of those days 
would have more appropriately called her "pauperima 
mama /" for she dealt out very scanty allowance to her family 
either for body or mind, and treated her sons as movers to 
our new States treat their horses ; she turned them out at 
night to pick up what they could. The truth is, her mother 
the State, acted a very unnatural part towards her, and, soon 
after she was born, seemed to take a dislike to her own off- 
spring, and to try to starve it. Do yon wish to know the 
ordinary bill of fare at the Steward's Hall, fifty years ago ? 
As well as I recollect board per annum was thirty-five dollars I 
This, as you may suppose, would not support a very luxurious 
table, but the first body of trustees were men who had seen 
the revolution, and they thought that sum would furnish as 
good rations as those lived on who won our liberties. Coarse 
corn bread was the staple food. At dinner the only meat 
was a fat middling of bacon, surmounting a pile of coleworts ; 
and the first thing after grace was said (and sometimes be- 
fore) was for one man, by a single horizontal sweep of his 
knife, to separate the ribs and lean from the fat, monopolize 
all the first to himself, and leave the remainder for his fel- 
lows. At breakfast we had wheat bread and butter and 
coffee. Our supper was coffee and the corn bread left at 
dinner, without butter. I remember the shouts of rejoicing 
when we had assembled at the door, and some one jumping 
up and looking in at the window, made proclamation : 
" Wheat bread for supper, boys !" And that wheat bread. 



25 

. er which such rejoicings were raised, believe me gentle- 
lien and ladies, was manufactured out of wheat we call 
seconds, or, as some term it, grudgeons. You will not wonder, 
:i *, after such a supper, most of the students welcomed the 
approach of night, as beasis of prey, that they might go a 
prowling, and seize upon every thing eatable within the 
compass of one or two miles ; for, as I told you, our boys 
were followers of the laws of Lycurgns. Nothing was secure 
from the devouring torrent. Beehives, though guarded by a 
thousand stints — all feathered tenants of the roost — water- 
melon and potato patches, roasting ears, &c, in fine every 
thing that could appease hunger, was found missing in the 
morning. These marauding parties at night were often 
wound up with setting the village to rights. I will relate 
one of these nocturnal adventures, and it was only " unum e 
pluribus" I must premise that Dr. Caldwell seems to have 
made it a part of his fixed policy, that no evil-doer should 
hope to escape by the swiftness of heels, and that whoever 
was surprised at night in any act of mischief, should be run 
down, caught and brought to justice. Whether the Doctor 
brought that feature of his policy from Princeton, where he 
was educated, or whether, being conscious that nature had 
gifted him with great nimbleness of foot, he was a little am- 
bitious of victory in that line, I will not determine; but 
certain it is, that he was in the habit of rambling about, at 
night, in search of adventures, and whenever he came across 
an unlucky wight engaged in taking off a gate, building a 
fence across the street, driving a brother calf or goat into the 
chapel, or any similar exploit of genius, he no sooner hove 
in sight than he gave chase ; nor did the youthful malefactor 
spare his sinews that night; for he knew that if he ever ran 
for life or glory, now was the time. Homer makes his hero 
Achilles, the swiftest as well as the bravest on the plains of 
Troy. No foe could match him in battle or escape him by 
flight. Dr. Caldwell was the podas okus Achilles of Chapel 
Hill, and he had more occasion for powers of pursuit than of 
contest, for his antagonists uniformly took to flight. You call 
this a " fast a^e," gentlemen, and so it is. but I don't know a 



26 



man of this generation who is faster than was Dr. Caldwell. 
He liked to go fast in everything, and therefore he was not 
satisfied to take two days in getting to Raleigh. He and I 
have set out for the metropolis in the morning, and stopt the 
first night at Pride's, ten miles this side, such was the state 
of the roads. Who knows but such snail-like progress as 
this suggested to him the first idea of the present railroad 
from Beaufort to the mountains, the honor of which, I believe, 
is now conceded to him ? E"ow, O ! muse, that didst inspire 
Homer to describe Achilles' pursuit of Hector, three times 
round the walls of Troy ; or thou gentler muse, who diclst 
breathe thy soft afflatus upon Ovid when he described the 
race between Apollo and fair Daphne ; or thou Caledonian 
muse, who didst preside over "Walter Scott, when he sung the 
race of Fitz James after Murdock of Alpine, or over Robert 
Burns, when he made immortal the flight of Tarn o' Shanter 
from the witches, — either of you or all of the nine at once, 
assist me to describe the race between President Caldwell 
and Sophomore Faulkner, on the night of the — day of — , 
IS — . The President lived at that time where his successor 
now lives, and was returning about bed time " from walking 
up and down upon the earth, "* to see if any of the students 
were— where they ought not to be. As he was mounting 
the style which stood where Dr. Wheat's south-east corner 
now stands, he spied two young men, busily engaged in 
building a fence from that corner across the street to the op- 
posite corner. This, by the way, was always the difficulty in 
carrying out the manual labor system in our schools, and 
constituted the grand distinction between negro-labor and 
student-labor : that the negro fenced in the field and hoed up 
the weeds ; the student hoed up the cotton and fenced in the 
street. The lads had just before his appearance heard that 
portentous snapping of the ankles, which was a remarkable 



* Should any of my more serious readers complain of an impropriety in this quota- 
tation from Job 1 : vii., they will perhaps find an apology for the allusion in the fact, 
well known to all alumni of that period, that Diabolus shortened into Bolus, was the 
common nickname of the President, and that while engaged in their deeds of dark- 
ness, they would just as willingly have seen the one as the other. 



) 



* _ 27 

peculiarity of Dr. Caldwell's locomotives, and was very use- 
ful to the evil-doers in enabling them to get several yards the 
start in the race. As soon as they heard this premonitory 
crepitation (which, I suppose, they were wont to consider as 
a providential forewarning of danger, like the rattle of the 
rattle-snake) one of the fencemakers, whose nom de guerre 
w T as Dog, skulked into a corner and was passed by. Faulk- 
•ner sprang forward. But I forgot that Homer always spends 
a line or two in describing his heroes, before he brings them 
into action. So I must suspend the race, till I have given 
my audience some idea of Faulkner's person and character. 
He was a tall, bony, gaunt and grim looking fellow, with 
shaggy threatening eyebrow — had been at Norfolk during 
the war of 1S13-'14:, as a soldier or officer, and had con- 
tracted a soldier's love of adventure and frolic, and like 
Macbeth, would have run from nothing born of mortal, if he 
had been engaged in a good cause. But building a fence 
across the street at night, his conscience set down as a deed 
of darkness, and therefore proved like the conscience of one 
of the murderers of the Duke of Clarence in Shakspeare's 
Richard III. "This thing conscience," says he, "is a blush- 
ing, shame-faced spirit, that mutinies in a man's bosom ; it 
tills one full of obstacles. A man cannot steal but it accuseth 
him ; a man cannot swear but it checks him. It made me 
once restore a purse of gold that by chance I found. It beg- 
gars any man that keeps it. I'll not meddle with it. It is a 
dangerous thing. It makes a man a coward." So it proved 
with the soldier of Norfolk on that memorable night. His 
conscience made him a coward, but perhaps it enabled him 
to run the faster, on that occasion, and he might have es- 
caped, had any but " the swift-footed Achilles " given chase. 
But fate had doomed him to lose this race : 

Forth at full speed the fence-man flew — 
Faulkner of Norfolk, prove thy speed, 
For ne'er had sophmore such need ; 
With heart of fire and foot of wind, 
The fierce avenger is behind ; 
Fate judges of the rapid strife, 



28 



The forfeit death, the prize is life, 
He leaves the gates, he leaves the walk behind 
Achilles follows like the winged wind ; 
Thus at the panting dove a falcon flies, 
(The swiftest racer of the liquid skies ;) 
Just when he holds or thinks he holds his prey, 
Obliquely wheeling through the aerial way, 
With open beak and shrilling cries he springs, 
And aims his claws and shoots upon his wings, 
Just so around and round the chase they held 
One urged by fury, one by fear impelled ; 
Thus step by step where'er the Trojan wheeled 
There swift Achilles compassed round the field ; 
So on the laboring heroes pant and strain. 
While that but flees and this pursues in vain ; 
Thus three times round the Trojan walls they fly, 
The gazing gods lean forward from the sk} r , 
Jove lifts the golden balances that show, 
The fates of mortal man and things below ; 
Here each contending hero's lot he tries 
And weighs with equal hand their destinies. 
Low sinks the scale surcharged with Faulkner's fate — 
Thus heaven's high powers the strife did arbitrate: 
Just then the Faulkner tripped, and prostrate fell, 
And on the sprawling body pitched Caldwell ! 

Having thus disposed of one of the fencernakers, the vic- 
torious President went back in quest of the other, who, 
instead of coming to the assistance of his friend, had lost no 
time in leaving the field of action. The President, after 
beating the bush awhile, returned to the college, where, in 
the meantime, Faulkner, with clipped wings and fallen crest, 
had gathered a party in one of the rooms, and was telling 
the fortunes of the night. Little did he dream that his 
exulting conqueror was standing close by, in the dark, listen- 
ing to every word. " And what became of Dog?" inquired 
one of the party. " Oh ! Dog, he took to the woods and I 
dare say he is running yet." When the court met, the next 
day, to try the delinquents, it appeared in evidence from the 
tutor, that Dog was the sobriquet of Junius Moore. He was 
accordingly startled by a summons served upon him by old 



Daniel Bradley, the college constable, to appear before the 
faculty as particeps criminis with Faulkner. They were 
both charged with what the lawyers might call tortiously 
doing a tortuous act. In plainer language, with feloniously, 
wickedly, and with malice aforethought, then and there, 
laying down, making, building and constructing, a Virginia 
fence across the street, against the peace and dignity of the 
State. Gentlemen, you who have read Cicero r s graphic 
description of the confusion of face and dumbfoundedness of 
Cataline's accomplices when the consul confronted them 
with all the damning evidences of their guilt, you can con- 
ceive and none but you, the looks and behaviour of the two 
fencemakers, when Dog was thus unexpectedly arraigned at 
the bar. " They were so amazed and stupified," says Cicero,. 
kt they so looked upon the ground, they so cast furtive glances- 
at each other, that now they seemed to be no longer informed 
on by others, but to inform on themselves." What the fac- 
ulty did with the offenders I do not recollect,, but remember, 
young gentlemen, it is all upon the faculty-book, and I hope 
none of you are ambitious of a place in that chapter of the 
history of the University or to be enrolled in the Newgate 
calendar. 

As for Dog, he deserved a better name, for he was a native- 
born poet, and he and Philip Alston (a graduate of 1829,) 
are among the few of our alumni on whose birth Melpomene 
did smile. Had Moore lived he might have written some- 
thing to justify 7 these praises. Alston lived long enough to 
leave some memorials of his genius, but,, alas I not long 
enough for our fame or for his own. 

"For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime — 
Young Lycidas — and hath not left his peer V T 

That night was one of the Nodes Atticce or Ambrosianm, if 
you choose so to name them, which signalized the early his- 
tory of this college. Dr. Caldwell was a good man and a 
wise man ; but I wonder he did not see, that the Olympic 
games of Greece had not a greater attraction for that 






30 

sprightly people, than such night adventures have for some 
freshmen — sophomores — juniors — shall I go on f and that for 
the chance of such a race as this, many a wild collegian 
would run all the risk of suspension, three nights of every 
week. 

And here, perhaps, it will not be offensive to introduce, 
among my reminiscences, the shadow of a reminiscence, 
which rests like a penumbra among the more distinct impres- 
sions on the tablet of my memory. It relates to a man who 
has long borne a conspicuous and honorable part among the 
editors of our county — one of the surviving Titans, who has 
planted his battery not five miles from the throne of Jove, 
and hurled many a thirty-two pounder at the white-house and 
at the capitoh Should this page chance to meet his eye, and 
should he recognize in it a faint nucleus of fact, he will laugh 
at a college legend which always hands down a much better 
story than it received. President Caldwell once caught some 
boys in mischief; among the rest he descried one on the top 
of the college, fastening a goose to the very ridge of the roof. 
u Ah! Joseph, Joseph," said he "I suppose thou art fixing 
up that poor bird there, as an emblem of thyself." Perhaps 
that severe cut from his teacher may have goaded the youth- 
ful truant to throw away the goose forever afterwards, reserv- 
ing only a quill wherewith to write himself into renown. I 
hope he will forgive me for thus heralding his exploits itpon 
the house-tops. 

The bell, too, that everlasting mischief-maker, could never 
be confined to its legitimate utterances, as long as its notes, 
at dead of night, set all the faculty on the " qui vive^ and 
when a string, passing from it to some upper window, ena- 
bled a freshman, to whom it was a novelty, to create myste- 
rious music, as if gotten up by the spirits of the air. But 
since the faculty have put it upon the ground that sometimes 
little boys come here just after their mothers have taken the 
rattles from about their necks and that they must be amused 
awhile with some noise, as a substitute, the officers indulge 
such in bell-ringing until they have got their fill, and then 
the nuisance is abated. 



31 

As for myself- being brought up in the Caldwellian school, 
I once did try my hand at a night adventure, and sallied forth 
to catch a party of revellers in the woods. I came upon 
them by surprise and captured several, but in pursuing one, I 
got hung in a grape vine, which cured me of pursuing stu- 
dents at night. 

There was one other adventure, however, in which pars 
magna fui. As it is characteristic of the times, I will beg 
pardon for relating it. The two societies, as I have already 
intimated, were then often at dagger's points with each other, 
and were sometimes in danger of a general engagement. 
Like all young things, they easily got angry, and had no ob- 
jections to a tight, while older animals grow wiser, and find 
peace much more comfortable and much more dignified than 
war. (I beg pardon of the august crowned heads that are 
now butting each other on the plains of Italy*.) On one 
occasion the champions of the respective bodies came into 
collision and had a desperate fight, in which one of them, 
much more of a bully than the other, got his antagonist 
down and beat him most dreadfully, though I never heard 
that he gouged him. It was a kind of melee, several being 
engaged on both sides. Dr. Caldwell thought it absolutely 
necessary to adopt vigorous measures to put a stop to such 
outrages. It appeared that the bully had provoked the fight, 
and was most to blame. So a writ was taken out to arrest 
him and carry him to Hillsboro', where the superior court 
was then sitting. The Presidents posse comitalus was sum- 
moned to take him. The house where he secreted himself 
was surrounded, the besieged leaped out upon the shed, and 
attempted to jump down ; but being headed on all sides, he 
surrendered at discretion, /was one of the guard to Hills- 
boro'. It was a rainy night, the prisoner purposely kept his 
horse in a walk, that we might not bring him into town at 



* That old commentator on the Bible, Matthew Henry, as full of wit as of wisdom, 
remarks that the prophets very fitly represent the great conquerors of the earth, 
under the emblems of lions, leopards, bears, rams, he-goats, &c. If so, our allusion 
in the text is not inapposite, and the world need not care much which has the ha: 
head, the ram or the he-goat. 



32 



night, as a guarded criminal. So we rode up at breakfast 
time, like a party of travelers, to the hotel, where the judge, 
and prosecuting officer, and a crowd of people were standing. 
Our mittimus was examined, when lo and behold ! the justice 
of the peace who issued it, had, either accidentally or on 
purpose, left out of the writ the initials of his office " J. P.," 
and without those magic letters, it was as harmless as a lion 
with his head cut off. So the whole proceeding w T as quashed, 
the prisoner discharged, the expedition covered with ridicule, 
and the escort went home pretty well sick of sheriff's busi- 
ness. I beg you, gentlemen in authority here, if you ever 
have a like occasion, remember the letters J. P. 

While we are passing over certain early incidents of Dr. 
Caldwell's administration, before I leave the subject, the au- 
dience will no doubt indulge me in here introducing a brief 
notice of one of his most valued colleagues and coadjutors, 
the late lamented Dr. Mitchell. Here let us pause to drop a 
tear to the memory of this martyr of science. He fell a 
victim to too great self-reliance. This trait in his character, 
owing, no doubt, in a considerable degree to constitutional 
temperament, was stimulated and confirmed by a New- 
England education, in which youth are seldom indulged in 
that life of ease and indolence so common and so pernicious 
among ourselves ; but are early thrown upon their own en- 
terprize, and invention, and industry, for providing their 
future livelihood. This characteristic of that part of our 
country, is remarkably calculated to develop all the latent 
energies within a youth, whether for good or for evil — a 
stern necessity "to do or die" — to swim or sink, which may 
produce a Franklin and a Webster, or peradventure a Bene- 
dict Arnold — like the fierce sun of the tropics, which concocts 
at once the aromatic gums and the deadly poisons. 

This self-reliance of our regretted friend, was conspicious 
from his first appearance among us. It carried him as a 
botanist, over almost every hill and meadow and into even- 
nook and corner of our extensive State, alone, and through 
all weathers ; and led him, as a geologist, to scale every 
mountain and penetrate every cavern, where nature might 



33 

promise spoils to philosophic curiosity. While youth remain- 
ed, he escaped unharmed from the perils into which bis 
adventurous spirit pushed him ; but, like Milo, the famous 
athlete of Crotono, he forgot that he was growing old, and 
was lured to his death by too great confidence in that 
strength and activity on which he had so often relied with 
safety. At his age and with his high position as a savant, he 
was entitled to an escort. He ought not to have been seen 
venturing alone and unassisted among precipitous cliffs, 
to make good North-Carolina's claim to the Chimborazo of 
the Alleganies. He ought to have had a retinue of enthusi- 
astic pupils at his heels, {magna comitante caterva,) carrying 
his chain and his compass, and his barometer, and his tent 
and traveling chest. And I have no doubt he might have 
enlisted such a corps of his pupils had he desired and 
requested it. But his self-reliance seemed to scorn all help, 
as a confession of incapacity and dependance. A bivouac 
in a mountain gorge, alone and far from the haunts of men, 
had something in it inviting to his bold and inquisitive genius. 
I think I have heard him say, that in one of his visits to the 
same mountainous region, he had been drenched to the skin 
by a thunder-storm, and had laid down and slept in his wet 
clothes, till the morning. That such a man would fall pre- 
maturely by his excessive spirit of adventure, was naturally 
to have been apprehended, and we might have justly cau- 
tioned him. in the lan^ua^e of Andromache : 

''Too daring man, ah! whither wouldst thou run. 
Ah ! too forgetful of thy wife and son ; 
For sure such courage length of life denies, 
And thou must fall, thy virtue's sacrifice !" 

I have such an opinion of my late friend's undaunted 
spirit of adventure, that I believe, if he had been one of the 
scientific corps who accompanied Xapuleon in his expedition 
to Egypt, and if that general had summoned them all befort- 
him and said : i; I want a man who will go to the biggest 
of the pyramids, find its secret entrance, explore, lamp in 
hand, its dark winding galleries, search its inmost penetralia 
3 



34 

and bring out, if to be found, the sarcophagus of Cheops 
himself" — I believe that Elisha Mitchell would have stept 
forth and said : " I'll try it." He would have been the very 
man to have joined Dr. Kane in his Arctic expedition. That 
daring navigator pushed his investigations to latitude 82° 30', 
the farthest hyperborian point ever reached by the foot of 
science, and laid down the coast to within less than 8° of the 
pole. But if Mitchell had been along with him and Dr. 
Kane had detached him on an exploring trip, I should not 
have wondered if the pole itself had been discovered, and 
Mitchell had tied his boat to the axis of the earth ! Shade 
of my departed companion! forgive this sportive ebullition, 
to which I have been tempted by the recollection of thine 
own jocose temper and playful spirit. How often, when I 
have gone to thee, gloomy and fretted by some transient 
irritation, has thy contagious hilarity and sunshiny face dis- 
pelled the cloud from my brow and the spleen from my 
temper, and I felt the truth of that inspired sentiment : " As 
iron sharpeneth iron, so does a man sharpen the countenance 
of his friend." Of such a man might be said, in the beauti- 
ful language of Dr. Johnson, that "his death has eclipsed 
the gaiety of his country and impoverished the general stock 
of harmless pleasure," as well as of valuable science. 

But, brothers of the alumni, I could not excuse myself, 
and I should but ill perform the duty committed to me this 
day, if I devoted the whole of this address to amusing or 
mournful reminiscences of the past. I wish to say something 
before I sit down, which will be profitable for the future. It 
may be allowable, on a joyous anniversary like the present, 
to entertain ourselves and our audience, with some pictures 
of college life, half a century ago. But it becomes us as ed- 
ucated men, who have gone through the perils and who have 
reaped the fruits of a collegiate career, to direct our thoughts 
to the great question how these perils may be encountered 
and these advantages secured with the least admixture of 
evil. As lovers of our common country — as North-Carolini- 
ans, ambitious of the honor of our State — as men bound to 
feel for those many parents who trust to these walls their 



35 

dearest treasure — their sons, that are to bless or to blast their 
homesteads, — we ought to make it a subject of anxious 
thought, how to prevent a great college from being a great 
calamity. As men of reflection and humanity, we must have 
been often saddened by observing the vast amount of waste 
in human life, human talent and human happiness, which the 
spectacle of our colleges presents. That there is a strong 
tendency, when large numbers of young men are congre- 
gated together, and live to themselves, with very little inter- 
mixture with general society, to become dissipated, riotous 
and lawless, the history of all colleges proves, both in this 
country and in Europe. The two universities of England have 
been long famous as the abodes of licentiousness of all kinds. 
Mr. Griscom, one of the most respectable and intelligent 
citizens of New York, visited Oxford about forty years ago, 
and after witnessing a digraceful scene enacted by a party of 
students at the hotel" makes the following reflections : " Alas ! 
for such an education as this. What can Latin and Greek 
and all the store of learning and science have to make 
amends in an hour of retribution, for a depraved heart and 
an understanding debased by such vicious indulgence. I 
cannot but cherish the hope that this incident does not fur- 
nish a fair specimen of the morals of the students. It will 
doubtless happen, that in so large a number as that here col- 
lected, in the various colleges, many will bring with them 
habits extremely unfavorable to morality and subordination. 
But from the information derived from my guide, who was a 

* " Of the morality of some of the collegians, I had a most unfavorable specimen. 
Four or five of them carce in the evening, to the inn where I had taken up my quar- 
ters, in the principal street in the town. They entered the coffee room, where two or 
three travelers and myself Were sitting, engaged in conversation. After surveying us 
and the room for some time, they went out but shortly after returned, seated them- 
selves in one of the recesses into which one side of the room is divided, and ordered 
supper and drink. Their conversation soon assumed a very free cast, and eventually 
took such a latitude as, I should suppose, would set all Billingsgate at defiance. They 
abused the waiter, broke a number of things, tore the curtains that enclose the re- 
cesses—staid till near twelve o'clock, and then went off, thoroughly soaked with wine, 
brandy and hot toddy. I was told, the next morning, that two of them were noble* 
men.'''' (A very different thing from noble men.)— Griscom's Tear in Europe, vol. 1 5 
pp. 60, 61. 



36 

moderate man, and certainly well informed with respect to 
the habits of the place, and from the observations which 
forced themselves upon me in my walks through the streets 
and gardens, this evening, I am obliged to deduce the lament- 
able conclusion that the morals of the nation are not much 
benefitted by the direct influence of this splendid seat of 
learning." And although he inclines to the opinion, that the 
state of morals is not quite so bad at Cambridge, yet he 
admits it to be a doubtful question, and that this is only a 
surmise of his own, and says : " It would be a curious and 
interesting subject of inquiry to ascertain, with as much 
accuracy as possible, the comparative morality of Oxford 
and Cambridge, as it is admitted that in Oxford the collegiate 
studies are directed with paramount assiduity to moral phi- 
losophy and the higher range of classical learning, while in 
Cambridge, mathematics and natural philosophy have a tran- 
scendent influence."* 

What license, what scorn, what blasphemy, what atheism, 
must the rowdies of Cambridge feel at liberty to indulge in, 
when they see the disbanded debauchees of the camp sud- 
denly turned into pastors, having the care of souls ! 

This testimony relates to the state of things at those cele- 
brated universities forty years ago. Have things improved 
there since that date ? Let us hear the testimony of Sydney 
Smith, one of the most distinguished literati of the present 
century, whom none will suspect of too austere and puritan- 
ical a view of the subject. In a letter written but a few 
years ago, to one of his female correspondents, he says: "I 

* There is one feature which Mr. Griscom observed at his visit to Cambridge, 
which is certainly significant, and ominous of a low state of morals. "Since the late 
peace," says he, [this was written in 1819, soon after the anti-Napolean armies had 
been disbanded,] " a great number of persons, from the army and navy, have entered 
as students of divinity, relying on family influence for promotion, and in consequence 
of such influence, no inconsiderable number have been promoted, and over the heads, 
too, of others, who have devoted many years to the duties of the university. Surely 
no wound can be inflicted on religion more deep and deadly than to place a man by 
the mere dictum of hierarchical authority, in the station of a Christian minister, who 
is just reeking from the camp, and who has no qualifications either of head or heart 
for the solemn office, and probably no taste for any of its accompaniments except for 
the loaves and fishes." — Vol. 2 .' p. 210. 



•37 
• 

feel for Mrs. about her son at Oxford, knowing as I do, 

that the only consequences of a university education are the 
growth of vice and the waste of money."* 

In the German universities so far as reports have been 
published among us, the state of morals is even worse, the 
frequent practice of duelling being added to the usual^vices 
-of college life. 

To come nearer home, what has been the experience of 
our neighboring sister South-Carolina? In the beginning of 
this century, she began to awaken to the duty and the policy 
of providing means for the home education of her sons, who 
had hitherto been educated in the Northern States or in 
Europe. Somewhat later than we, she created a State col- 
lege, and endowed it with that enlightened liberality worthy 
of the intelligence and opulence of her leading men. But, 
alas ! the history of that college proves how useless it is to 
make all these munificent preparations of faculty, of library, 
of apparatus and of buildings, if there are not materials 
enough of the right kind out of which to make students — if 
the young men of the country are reared up in ease, idleness 
and luxury, and know that they are rich enough to do with- 
out an education. What is the usual course with such young 
men ? They go to college ; they there find numbers of idlers 
like themselves, they find study irksome and disgusting, 
pleasure spreads out her seductions before them, they are 
indulged with plenty of money, and habits of ruinous dissi- 
pation follow as the necessary results. If they are sent 
home, what penalty there awaits them? A horse, a gun and 
dog, fine clothes and the ladies ! Who would immure him- 
self in a college cell with such companions as Thucydides and 
his crabbed Greek, or Loomis's Differential and Integral 
Calculus, when by going down street and " getting up a row," 
he can be sent home to so much pleasanter employment and 
company? The result of South-Carolina's experiment upon 
a college, we have from authority the most unsuspicious and 
authentic. One of the most respectable alumni, one of the 

* Life, vol 2 : p. 402. 



38 

oldest judges on the bench of that State has given his testi- 
mony, which has been copied into most of the newspapers of 
the land. "I have known that institution," says Judge 
O'Neall, " intimately since 1811, when I first entered its 
walls, and I have no hesitation in saying that one-fourth of 
its students have been affected injuriously or destroyed by 
intoxicating drinks. Indeed I fully believe that one-fourth 
of its graduates sleep in drunkards' graves." He goes on 
to say, however, that " notwithstanding this dread scourge, 
South-Carolina college has accomplished an immense amount 
of good," &c. A valuable lesson was learned from the 
results of the Cooper administration of that institution. Dr. 
Thomas Cooper was called to the presidency from his high 
reputation as a man of science and general learning, and 
perhaps with some reference to his orthodoxy on political 
questions, then deeply agitating that State. It would have 
been hard to find a man of more multifarious learning. He 
was a lawyer, a statesman, a physician, a philosopher, natu- 
ral and moral, and somewhat even of a theologian ; but withal 
he was an infidel, an atheist. And the college soon took the 
type of its head. Infidelity and irreligion took possession of 
the seat and centre of knowledge, and therefore soon became 
rife through the State. A State college is the eye of the 
body politic, and " if the eye be evil the whole body shall be 
full of darkness." The college was broken down by dissipation 
and disorder ; parents lost all confidence, and durst not expose 
their sons to the double danger of infidel principles and profli- 
gate example. At length Gov. McDuffie in his message to the 
legislature, was obliged to report the State college as a failure ; 
and though an infidel himself, he candidly admitted that the 
prevalence of infidel sentiments had destroyed the public 
confidence and reduced the college to its present low condi- 
tion, and he therefore advised a re-organization of the faculty 
and a new trial for success under different auspices. Accord- 
ingly three of the foremost men in the State for talents and 
religious character, w r ere installed as president and professors, 
and a special professorship was created of Christian Evi- 
dences. Yery soon the college regained its former patronage, 



39 



religion was respected, the gospel powerfully preached twice 
every Sunday in the college chapel, and infidelity, formerly 
triumphant and open-mouthed, was now silent and humbled, 
if not extinct. Here was an experiment whose fruits I trust 
will be permanently and extensively useful, namely : that a 
literary institution, without the religious element to leaven 
the mass, will not be supported by the people of this country. 
The University of Virginia had to go through the same 
experience. It was the child of Mr. Jefferson, whose infidel- 
ity was well known, and had a contagious influence on the 
leading public men of the State. No provision was made 
for any religious worship or religious instruction in the uni- 
versity. The institution, for several of the first years of its 
existence, had a bad name for vice and irreligion — the reli- 
gious public mourned and complained that the State univer- 
sity founded and supported by the votes and the treasure of 
the commonwealth, for the education of the son3 of the com- 
monwealth, should ignore Christianity, and be given up to 
anti-christian influences. This was the apparent design, by 
leaving out religion entirely in the course of instruction and 
in the appointment of officers. To do Mr. Jefferson justice, 
this seems not to have been in his contemplation. Unbe- 
liever as he was, himself, he was too shrewd a politician, and 
too well acquainted with the people of this country, to at- 
tempt a literary establishment among us, having none of the 
moral and popular influences of Christianity. His idea was 
this, as I learned from his own lips, when I paid a visit to 
Monticello, in 1823, only three years before his death, and 
but a short time before the university went into operation. 
He thought that the established American principle of non- 
interference in religious matters, and the division of our 
people into different sects, rendered it improper and imprac- 
ticable to incorporate in the plan of the university any pro- 
vision for the teaching of religion. But it was announced 
publicly, that all the religious bodies were authorized and 
were encouraged to establish, at the seat of the university, 
any foundations and lectureships that they might deem expe- 
dient, and they were promised the free use of the library and 



40 

of the lectures of the academical department. This seems 
to vindicate Mr. Jefferson on this point. But, as the sugges- 
tion above mentioned was not adopted by the various reli- 
gious denominations, after a few years' experiment, the 
absence of Christianity was proved to be a serious evil, and 
disreputable to the university. So the faculty and students 
by common consent, determined to call a chaplain to per- 
form the ordinary religious services, and that they might ob- 
viate the jealousy of religious sects, the chaplain was to be 
chosen from the prevalent religious bodies, in rotation. This, 
I believe, has worked well, and to the satisfaction of all. 
The present arrangements also give to all ministers and can- 
didates for the ministry, the privilege of attending gratuit- 
ously the lectures of the professors, which, it would seem, 
ought to appease all alarms and silence all complaints. 

The college of which we boast ourselves to be sons, was 
founded in an era most dark and inauspicious to religion — 
the close of the last and the beginning of the present century. 
Our country had just emerged from a long, distressing war, 
and it is well known that war has a hardening effect upon 
the minds of men, familiarizing them with blood and death, 
and rendering them skeptical and indifferent in matters re- 
lating to a future world. To this add the overshadowing 
influence of France. The splendor of her philosophers and 
political economists had then attracted the admiration of the 
world ; her powerful fellowship in arms had helped us happily 
through our struggle for liberty, and then her imitation of us 
in bursting her own shackles, — all these ties had bound us to 
her destines with an enthusiasm and self-sacrifice which had 
well nigh engulphed us in the same devouring whirlpool that 
finally swallowed up her first republic. She reciprocated all 
our enthusiasm, and received our Franklin in Paris with the 
honors of a demigod, condensing into one pregnant Latin 
hexameter his two greatest exploits — the snatching of light- 
ning from heaven, and the sceptre from tyrants: 

" Eripuit coelo fulmen, sceptrum que tyrannis."* 

* Turgot, the famous political economist, was the author of this beautiful eulogium. 



41 

Unhappily when France overturned the throne and the 
Bastile, she overturned, with the same convulsive throes, the 
temple of God, and set up as her only object of worship, the 
goddess Liberty — liberty not only from the chains of despots, 
but from all belief in future responsibility. This portentous 
atheism spread its disastrous influence over most of our pub- 
lic men, and hence the works of Yoltaire and «his royal 
patron, Frederick of Prussia, of Rousseau, Helvetius, Bo- 
lingbroke, Hume, Gibbon and Paine, were found in the 
libraries of our principal families, however small these libra- 
ries were. Some of these, presented by trustees and others, 
were among the most conspicuous books in our university 
and society libraries, in their early beginnings. As the cock 
was the national emblem of France, it is hardly vulgar to 
quote here our homely proverb : " As the old cock crows 
the young one learns." Our first professors and students 
caught the Gallic infection ; and Dr. Caldwell among his 
earliest difficulties, had to struggle with infidelity in the 
faculty and infidelity among the students ; and hence, among 
his sermons of that elate, many will be found in refutation of 
objections against Christianity. The same difficulties Dr. 
Dwight was contending with at Yale college, to the presi- 
dency of which he was called a few years before this date. 
From the commencement of Dr. Caldwell's administration 
the christian religion has been recognised and taught in this 
institution, and its laws have required the students to attend 
such religious services as they were called to by the profes- 
sors. Since that time the growth of the several ecclesiastical 
bodies, has made it right and important to consult their 
wishes by representation in the academic corps ; and it would 
seem that the best practicable plan has been fallen on to 
allay sectarian jealousy, and to give Christianity such promi- 
nence in our collegiate system, as to impress our under- 
graduates with the conviction that it is venerated as of 
divine origin, and as the religion of our country. 

But after all this public provision for the maintenance of 
religious influence and of moral habits, it is a lamentable 
fact that colleges will nourish within their bosom, a large 



42 



amount of vicious dissipation, idleness and profusion. The 
two great obstacles to government and incentives to disorder 
are the congregation of large numbers of youth into houses 
by themselves, and the use of intoxicating drinks. Whether 
we have not made a mistake in thus isolating the students 
from family society, and crowding them together in such 
numbers under one roof, may admit of painful doubt. Judge 
O'JSTeall, whom I quoted a little while ago, gives it as his de- 
cided conviction, that dormitories ought to be done away 
with, and the students distributed among respectable families. 
Dr. James W. Alexander, of New York, one of the first 
men of this country, an alumnus of Princeton, and for a long 
time a professor there, in a letter received from him a few 
years since, says : " Of all absurd things in the world, one of 
the most absurd is to put a great number of boys together, 
in a large building, to keep house by themselves." This is 
the first difficulty, but whether the plan proposed as a remedy 
would succeed better has not, I believe, been put to the test. 
We cannot therefore say of the recipe : probation est. The 
other difficulty, the use of intoxicating liquors, is the gigantic 
evil of colleges, and leads all reflecting persons, as well as 
Mr. Griscom, sometimes to doubt whether all the benefits of 
public education are not outweighed by this enormous mis- 
chief to the morals and happiness of our families. War is, 
while it lasts, perhaps the most terrific calamity with which 
our race is scourged. Pestilence too, now and then, poisons 
the common element we all do breathe, and more than de- 
cimates our cities. These evils, however, are intermittent. 
They leave long intervals of repose and healthful enjoyment. 
But intemperance, begun in youth and often continued and 
aggravated through tedious years of shame and sorrow, in 
so many families — this, this, is the running ulcer of our social 
body; this is the perennial, fetid, stygian flood, that is circling 
round and round the land, and pouring its poisonous tide 
into our sacred homes. This it is which causes more human 
hearts to ache and more human faces to blush than any other 
cause. In vain have been all your temperance societies. 
In vain your temperance lecturers have been sent through 



43 

the length of the land — gifted with tragic powers to make 
the public weep over the horrors of drunkenness, and with 
comic powers to make the drunkard the laughing stock of 
the world. In vain have been all these schemes to abate 
the nuisance. Intemperance has grown under all these ap- 
pliances, like the cancer spreading under the surgeon's knife, 
or the Hydra multiplying its heads under the club of Her- 
cules. 

Alas ! Leviathan is not thus tamed ; 
Laughed at he laughs again, and stricken hard, 
Turns to the stroke his adamantine scales, 
That fear no discipline from human hands. 

And if this disease is so pernicious in its sporadic form, 
turning a home here and a home there into a habitation of 
wretchedness, what must it be when^ concentrated in a public 
institution, a multitude countenancing and stimulating each 
other, " despising the shame," and by their united strength 
breaking down every barrier ! A college thus tainted is 
like our great western river, with all its swollen affluents, 
bursting all the embankments, and carrying terror, and de- 
vastation, and malaria over the fruitful valley which it ought 
to adorn and fertilize. For this single vice is at the root of 
all collegiate disturbances and delinquencies. Of every 
drinking student may be said what was said of Judas Iscar- 
iot: "With the sop Satan entered into him." Hence all the 
counsels of educators, all the ingenuity of physicians, all the 
discoveries of chemistry, all the wisdom and power of legis- 
lative bodies, should be put in requisition to contend with 
this portentous mischief. And he who shall discover a cure 
or even an alleviation of this curse of humanity, will deserve 
a monument higher and more enduring than the pyramids, 
and be entitled to a gratitude deeper and wider than that 
accorded to Dr. Jenner, who has relieved the world of the 
terrors of small pox. Premiums are offered for all improve- 
ments in the industrial and economical arts, and for the best 
essays on all moral subjects ; but the richest premium will he 
deserve, who, by some chymic art, shall make young colle- 



u 



gians loathe intoxicating drinks, or by some happy improve- 
ment in political economy, shall drive ardent spirits out of 
the land as an article of manufacture or of commerce. The 
might of man has failed ; may we not appeal to the softer 
but more potent influence of woman? Will not the ladies, 
themselves safe and superior to this infirmity, come to the 
rescue of our powerless sex? We are called the stronger 
sex and they the weaker ; but as to temptations to vice they 
are the stronger and we are the weaker sex. I have the 
same opinion of them that Lord Chatham had of the English 
soldiers: "They can achieve anything but impossibilities."* 
They are not good at making large bargains, I admit, as is 
proved by the price they have agreed to give for Mt. Ver- 
non ; but even there, the bargain is to their credit, showing 
that they estimate the " value received," not in the worth of 
the land, but in the testimony of national gratitude and in 
sending an embassador around the land to teach in honied 
accents, the grandest lesson this family of matrons can learn, 
namely : by loving their common father, to love and cherish 
the united republic which he lived and labored and suffered 
to establish. Let those who have entered with so much zeal 
into this national "labor of love" now join their hearts in 
another, touching more nearly the happiness of their country 
and of the world. Let them proclaim with their sovereign 
voice, from one end of the continent to the other, that their 
smiles and their hands are the prize of sobriety alone. From 
all their lips let there be heard the general chorus : 

Young men, young men who love your drink, 
Your bark of hope and bliss must sink ; 
We'll never trust with you our life — 
You cannot, shall not have a wife. 

I venture with diffidence to make the following sugges- 
tions. It seems hopeless to put a stop to the use of all stimu- 
lating drinks. All nations have used them, and God consti- 

* The French have a proverb that truly expresses the power of woman : " Les 
femmes pouvent tout, parcequ'elles gouvernent les personnes qui gouvernent tout." 



45 

tnted wine with corn as a part of his special gifts to his 
people, in the Holy Land. Thus the inspired writer says : 
" He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle and herb for the 
service of man, and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, 
and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strength- 
cneth man's heart." Here you find wine mentioned like 
grass and herb, and oil, and bread, as gifts equally expressive 
of the kindness of Heaven. What God gives as a tonic and 
stimulant, along with the nutriment of man, cannot, if 
soberly and prudently used, be hurtful either to body or 
mind. In conformity with these providential bestowments 
of the old dispensation, we find the Saviour, in the New 
Testament, using wine at his meals, though it exposed him to 
the slander of being a wine-bibber — turning water into wine 
for the use of the guests, at a marriage banquet, and appoint- 
ing wine to be used at his own sacred supper. Now I by no 
means intend it to be understood that because in that day 
and country the fermented juice of the grape was a native 
product and a licensed beverage, therefore the adulterous 
and poisonous mixtures in use among us are lawful and expe- 
dient ; nor would 1 be understood as saying that the banish- 
ment of even pure wine would be beyond the right and 
duty of college authorities, any more than it would be beyond 
their right to prohibit a certain kind of food, if it was found 
that that kind of food led generally to gluttony and sickness. 
Besides, in modern times so many other beverages have been 
introduced, less dangerous and perhaps more nutritious, that 
we have less reason to use the wine of the shops, which is 
anything else but the juice of the grape. But what I am 
now aiming at is this : to inquire whether we could not, by 
introducing the vine among our agricultural products, make 
within ourselves a domestic beverage, safe and pleasant, and 
drive out the pestiferous liquors, foreign and homemade, 
which are now the bane of our land. An enlightened for- 
eigner from Germany, Mr. Schweinitz, who was honored 
with a seat in the board of trustees, and who used sometimes, 
to visit this place, declared that this locality where we now 
are, was the very country for the grape and the manufacture 



46 

of wine. Why should not our enlightened and more wealthy 
farmers, who can afford to make the experiment, instead of 
forever moving round in the same circle of crops, (corn, 
wheat, cotton, tobacco,) venture upon the culture of the 
grape and an experiment in wine, at first on a small scale ?* 
If our country should be found capable of producing light 
wines, harmless as a common drink, it might have a greater 
effect in promoting temperance than the effort at total absti- 
nence. It is admitted that the people of France are in 
general temperate, though the use of wine is universal, and 
that it is a rare thing to see a drunken man in that country. 
Mr. Hentz, formerly professor of French in this college, who 
spent his early life in Paris, used to say that he never saw a 
drunken man till he was seventeen years of age, and that he 
was at a loss to account for the singularity of his behaviour, 
ascribing it to a derangement. This superior sobriety of that 
light, and giddy, and impetuous nation, cannot be attributed 
to any moral cause, and is probably due to the fact that a 
cheap and innocuous beverage is accessible to every body. 
In the absence of wine from our country, might not some 
other innocent liquors be brought into use — beer, mead, cider, 
raspberry wine, &c. ? At Princeton, when I was there in 
1813, malt beer was a part of the college dinner ; and in 
Yale college, it was allowed as a perquisite to an indigent 
student, to sell liquors of that kind to the students ; whether 
it was abandoned at both of those great institutions, as lead- 
ing to injurious consequences, I never heard. I throw out 
these suggestions with some apprehension lest a bad use may 
be made of them, but the disease is so desperate it warrants 
bold experiments. From long thought and experience and 
from the high authorities I have quoted, I have been led to 
torm the theory of a college, of which if my audience will 

* I annex the following recent, documeut on this subject : 

Wine in Ohio. — An experienced writer who has one of the best vineyards in 15am- 
ilton coanty, says that four hundred gallons of wine per acre may be safely depended 
upon this year, as the product of the grape crop. The fermented juice of the grape 
veadily commands, when new, an average of §1 25 per gallon. At the above rate the 
crop will yield $500 per acre— about the most profitable crop that is produced in this 
country. 



47 

have patience with me I will give them a brief outline. It 
is impracticable, to be. sure, in an old country, and where all 
the expenditures of buildings have been already incurred. 
But I cannot help desiring to avail myself of so large an 
audience to present my thoughts on this subject for the 
consideration of an enlightened public. The generous dona- 
tions by Congress of extensive lands for educational purposes 
in our new States, would have furnished, and in some may 
yet furnish most favorable opportunities and facilities for 
carrying such a plan into execution : Let a tract of one or 
more square miles, healthy and beautiful in its aspect, and 
having an abundance of line water, be selected as the loca- 
tion. Let this territory remain, in jperpetiium, the property 
of the trustees ; let not a foot of it be sold. Let a village be 
laid out in convenient lots, and let respectable families be 
invited to lease them, for a term of years, and put up suitable 
houses, obligating themselves to take a certain number of 
boarders, and to keep no intoxicating drinks, under penalty 
of ejectment. This would give the trustees a control over 
the population, and enable them to exclude all improper 
inhabitants. The only public buildings then required would 
be houses for professors and public rooms for lectures, library 
and apparatus ; and the large sums heretofore expended in 
providing dormitories would be saved for endowing profes- 
sorships and scholarships, and procuring library and apparatus. 
This plan would promise to obviate the disturbances incident 
to a steward's table, the disorders generated by having large 
numbers in one house, and would if settlers of the right sort 
could be obtained, promote gentility of manners by inter- 
course with private families, and in case of sickness secure 
requisite quiet comfort and attendance. 

Such is the theory, and a fair vision it affords; but I am 
distrustful of all theories, and I should like to know whether 
there is anywhere an institution on this plan, and how it 
works. Favorers of things as they are, and conservatives 
suspicious of innovations, I confess may overcast this fair 
vision with forebodings of ills still greater than the present. 
A prophet less hopeful and perhaps more sagaciou than I, 



48 



may descry looming in the dim future visions of landlords 
with broken heads for informing the faculty that, last night, 
there was a card and wine party up stairs — visions of enam- 
ored students and love-sick daughters in every boarding 
house ; Corydon sighing for Chloe, and Chloe sighing, not for 
Corydon but for Daphnis — then dark spectres of Corydon 
and Daphnis in deadly strife — Amyntas 

" Sporting with Amaryllis in the shade, 
Or with the tangles of Neara's hair,"* 

instead of with his Demosthenes and Plato, — the scene wind- 
ing up with five matches on commencement night between 
so many graduates and so many daughters of their respective 
landlords. Alas ! I should have to insert among the condi- 
tions of my Utopian colony that the landlords should have 
no daughters, or should send them all off to school. These 
dark possibilities clouding my fairy vision, will, I fear, prevent 
its ever being realized, and induce the old fogies to fold their 
arms in scornful tranquility, saying: "All the difference be- 
tween the old plan and the new one will be, that instead of 
having one JEtna, with now and then a " great blow-out and 
have done with it," you will have fifty little smithies, with 
the roar of the bellows, the clanging of the anvil and the 
showers of sparks forever annoying you." So we see that 
on this, as on most subjects, " much may be said on both 
sides." 

After so long an address, can I, ought I to be insensible to 
the flattering attention and inarms of approbation with which 
it has been received ? I well know what has worked so 
mightily in my favor. Never was speaker more fortunate in 
the temper of the house. Among the charms which, accord- 
in & to old Homer, Jove conferred upon his darling daughter, 
Venus, was that of philommeides / she was the queen of 
smiles, the laughter-loving Aphrodite. So the presence of 
the chief magistrate of the Union has made every one joy- 
ous — it has given me a laughter-loving audience, and among 

* Milton's Lycidas. 



49 

them many a Venus, with lambent lightnings playing about 
her eyes, encircled with the irresistible Cestus, and with the 
little rogue Cupid sitting at her feet ever sharpening his 
burning arrows on a bloody whetstone.* 

And if I owe an apology to my kind and indulgent audi- 
ence for the parti-colored character of this address, this 
motley mixture of the serious and the ludicrous, here is my 
defence : Such is life, in which shade and sunshine chase each 
other over the plain— in which joy and sorrow rapidly alter- 
nate in our hearts — in which smiles often shine through our 
tears and dry them up — and again tears start forth and ex- 
tinguish the light of our smiles. Such is life, and such did 
Shakspeare, the greatest painter of life, represent it. His 
pictures of man are neither unmixed tragedies nor unmixed 
comedies, but tragi-comedies. Such alternations seem to be 
our Creator's design. 

The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife, 
Give all the strength and color of our life. 

Sorrow in advance makes the arrival of gladness more glad, 
and sorrow apprehended in the future chastises and tempers 
the transports of present pleasure, and mingles all our re- 
joicings with salutary trembling. 

Alas ! by some degree of wo, 

"We every bliss must gain ; 
The heart can ne'er a transport know, 

That never knew a pain. 

And yet something whispers me that the retrospect I have 
taken ought to have inspired a more serious strain. Of the 
long line of alumni with whom I have been contemporary, 
how few survive ! 

Apparent rari mantes in gurgite vasto. 

* " Ridet Venus, ferus et Cupido, 
Semper ardentes, acuens sagittas, 
Cote cruenta." [Hor, 

4 



50 

Of seven eminent men with whom I have had the honor 
to co-operate as professor in this institution, six have now 
passed off from the stage of action. Caldwell, Hentz, 
Mitchell, Andrews, Anderson and Olmsted are no more. 
Their accents which once contributed to enlighten and adorn 
our State, are now hushed in the voiceless grave, and per- 
haps ere another anniversary revolves around, and brings 
you together again, the two who yet remain will be gathered 
with those who have gone before them. To one who looks 
back fifty or sixty years, what a shadow is man ! how fleet- 
ing, how trifling do seem all his interests and schemes, his 
hopes and his fears ! The thought extorted a sigh even from 
a pagan moralist : 

" ! curas hominum ! ! quantum est in rebus inane."* 

How fading the honors of earth, how empty the applause 
of men ! But happy, thrice happy we, that this fading pa- 
geant is not all, — that our deathless souls, never satisfied with 
the limited and transient, and always reaching after some- 
thing illimitable and infinite, shall, if purified by religion, enter 
upon a state where all our companions and joys shall be 
perfect and unchangable : 

Where Time, and Pain, and Chance, and Death expire ; 

Where momentary ages are no more ; 

Where seraphs gather immortality, 

On Life's fair tree* fast by the throne of God. 

* Persius. 



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